Ludocracy Now

Hi there, blog.  I’ve missed you.  And it is so good to be back reporting on a night of board gaming and wine swilling.

Erik (most valuable guest) and I warmed up with a Hey, That’s My Fish! decided by one point and a Carcassonne that saw big cities beat small farms.

Then!  We got to some new stuff.  Two more ludocrats showed up and we played my home brew Love Letter as we waited for our fifth.  I got Christina out with a lucky Baron only to be Guarded by Tom.  Erik stole Tom’s Princess with the last play (impressive that Tom had the Princess for the entire game without being forced to discard).  It was over in 5 minutes but I can see the possibilities of it as a modern board game qua drinking game.

Nelson, our fifth and nascent ludocrat (and greatest swimmer I’ve ever known), texted ahead to let us know to start without him and he’d fill in.  Ghost Stories seemed like the perfect fit for someone new to gaming and needing to jump in in medias res.  Also Erik hasn’t stopped saying the words “Ghost Stories?” every time I mention “board gaming.”

Predictably, one of us said “Oh this game isn’t so hard” a few turns in, but before we knew it we were stumped and dead with 19 ghosts to go before Wu Feng showed up.  Even with five minds staring at the board we were overrun all over the place and without our precious Qi.

Lots of head scratching after the loss and we would love some advice from the blogaudience.  Nothing too obvious though—strategy advice in the form of a zen koan would be preferred.  We did have a few ideas after our loss and thankfully no one was (audibly) discouraged.

Nothing else to say except: Go Oles.  And, no, if you don’t know where Northfield is, you won’t know what that means.

Antiquity can be a real devil when you see there’s no way to improve your situation.

Carcassonne can be a real devil when someone draws the tile that allows them to share what was once your game winning farm.

100 plays of Antiquity prediction: Oct 16, 2032

100 plays of Carcassonne prediction: Nov 21, 2017

Gaming Streak = 2… He’s heating up!

I sent out the APB for some afternoon gaming yesterday and caught a beleaguered law student with my line.

Innovation x 2

Jake and I played our two longest games of Innovation with the expansion.  I don’t know if that’s a sign that we are getting better or getting worse but we were happy to at least get up to the level 7 and 8 techs.  I won the first game and only cheated (inadvertently) three times.  So I think that still counts.

Even though I’ve played this game 17 times, I still feel like I’m not being creative enough with my play.  I just look for an early point engine and if I don’t get it, I’m pretty lost until something slaps me in the face.  The game is still a wild ride even with my uninspiring play.  And even when I lost in the 2nd game it was a good time.  I was trying to be too cute and trying to snag only special achievements as Jake was running away with the score.  Turns out that is a bad strategy to follow.

Summoner Wars Swamp Orcs def Jungle Elves

Jake might know that there aren’t actually lions in jungles but he doesn’t know how to play this game very well.  I think he’s something like 0-7 in this game.  I hope it has more to do with him summoning too many commons than him being unable to focus on the positioning aspects of the game.

I say this because Star Wars X-Wing is coming soon and he would be a fantastic opponent for this.  He says he’s excited even though the game operates in one fewer dimension than he would prefer.  (If they develop a 3D expansion I’d buy it.) Hopefully he’ll have more success in X-Wing than he does in Itharia.

Amazons x 2

We then played a pair of Christmas themed Amazons, a new one to the ol’ Gobbler.  He was very impressed with the cleverness of the mechanics and I, too, was reminded of how fun this game is.  First game I won pretty handily, but Jake perked up in the second.  What’s interesting about this game is that you want to both isolate yourself and make sure you have options.  A thin line to balance and I manged to stay on a bit longer to squeeze out a victory in the 2nd game as well.

Carcassonne x 2

To finish our afternoon, we let our tired brains dine on a dessert of Carcassonne.  Jake had just seen the Lincoln movie so selected a troop of Union blue meeples when I chose grey.  First game we played with just vanilla tiles and, of course, fighting over farms was brutal.  I managed to bring a third farmer into the big field with the final tile to wash out any advantage he might have had.  This, thankfully, won me the game.

Second game we added in the Inns & Cathedrals and took the big meeple as a general for our troops.  Obviously we popped both of those suckers down onto the central farm early on.  The big farm was a wash but I got hosed on what would have been a sweet 27 point cathedral city when I could not draw for the life of me the damn tile I needed giving Jake the final win of the afternoon.  I need to find different ways to combat farms like 1) build bigger cities instead of smaller ones and 2) use roads effectively to keep the fields small instead of just dropping meeple after meeple on what ends up being ~15 point farms.  Anyway, it’s good for Jake’s ego to get in a win here and there.  Heh heh.

Can I make it three days in a row with epic gaming???  Tune in to find out next time on “Joe plays board games” hosted here on LudocracyNow!

I have a lot of 2-player card games so one might wonder why, since I profess to be some sort of Jones’ Theory follower, I nabbed a copy of Morels.  Well, I’ll tell you why One, if that is your real name.  Most of my 2-player card games are pretty involved either thematically (read: dragons! fantasy!) or mechanically (just try reading the rules to Game of Thrones the Card Game).  And yes, Jones’ Theory would say “Biblios is not involved and is a great game, you don’t need Morels.  Also, you have Battle Line and Parade.”

UGH ok FINE.  I fell for the hotness.  I am weak.  Plus, I saw a fellow internet celebrity had a copy (hopefully he will do one of his patented write ups on it he literally posted one just now SO GO READ IT.) and the internets just loves this game AND I thought maybe Jeff would play it with me.

Anyway, friend of the week award winner Katie came over and saved me from going a week without gaming (the results of which mirror feeding a gremlin after midnight) and we tried out Morels for the first time.  The rules made me think it was just going to be a nicely illustrated game of Gin Rummy or something and Katie’s apathy for the ruleset was indicated by her texting boys throughout the explanation.

As we played, we realized the game was a lot less forgiving than a Gin Rummy or a Benevolent God.  It felt like we were driving some sort of F-Zero vehicle through the forest rather than walking—all the mushrooms I wanted went flying past.  I did not manage the game very well and Katie beat me both times we played (“You’re gonna put that in the blog, right?” -Katie) and beat me brutally when she cooked five chantrelles in cider.

But there was balm in Gilead as we played some vanilla Carcassonne and I beat her by, like, a billion.

Hey guys!  Quite the gaming session last night:

—A game of Hey, That’s My Fish! which ended with the improbable score of 35 (Jake) - 31 (Joe) - 27 (Hannah).  The intrepid reader may notice that 93 points is more than possible!  Oh well.

—A game of Eclipse with five which saw me try to impart the knowledge of the rules to three uninitiated.  I think it was going alright but since I don’t know a whole lot of strategy I couldn’t advise with much confidence.  We played five full rounds until Christina had to leave and it seemed like an appropriate time to wrap up anyway as I think we were experiencing some rules learning fatigue (if you will).  We did have some awesome dicefest showdowns in the galactic center, but I think five is too much when there are a majority of new players hopefully I didn’t scare everyone off because I want to play it again… right now.

—A final game of Carcassonne which saw Jake, Hannah and Erik leave me and Katie in the dust as they scored a farm and Katie and I scored very little.  Jake did manage to get the Pig (the one expansion module we added in, from Traders & Builders) in the farm which added a cherry on his already clear win.  I don’t understand this game at all and my losing streak continues ever on.

This may be the last update before Gen Con so I’ll see you all next week!

Last night saw Ludocracy Now reach the tipping point where we become incredibly popular!  We had a group nine strong at our largest.  What follows is an unauthorized account of the fun we had.

We began as four and I brought out Hey, That’s My Fish and all of the snagglepuss imitations I could muster.  A brief kerfuffle between Nate (Play your damn penguin already!) and Jake (I want to place it well. If that’s a problem with you I’ll quit!) demonstrated how mean this game can really be.  Katie let me have open access to a large block of iceberg which netted me 28 fish and the win.

Kyle showed up and was eager to demonstrate his ability to Ludocrat and since we were still waiting for Christina I suggested Carcassonne.  I managed to get last, of course, as you can see in the picture all of my meeples are stranded. “Oh, you basically don’t have to worry about stranding your meeples in five player Carc…” turned  out to be bad advice that I gave to myself/everyone.  Kyle won!  Beginners luck, obviously.

With Christina, we were eight people.  I had been suggesting to Erik (who was also part of that Carcassonne game) that even though he thought Red November was the least fun game he has ever played, that we should give it another try.  With a full complement of gnomish sailors we set off.  The first few events saw repeated Respites which… pedagogically was not the best thing as I had taken the “Learn the game by example” teaching track.  Anyway we made it about half way through the time before the ship overheated and we all died!  Not a moment too soon as Erik repeated his sentiment that “This is the worst game I’ve ever played.”

Lindsay, another new Ludotzarina, showed up and after asking two typical Ludocrat questions: “Where do you even find these games?” and “How many do you have?!” we set up team Small World!  Again, my teaching abilities mounted to repeating “oh, It’s simple, you’ll be fine” and “new people go last in the turn order and just figure it out.”  (I was a couple of grogs in, at this point).  Christina and I took wealthy Giants first and conquered the set of three mountains on the bottom side of the board.  We remained unmolested for quite some time.  We then had the luck to snatch up merchant skeletons.  Even Tom’s 19 point round could not stop our might!  I’m pretty sure we won?

Thus concludes our most popular and populous session of Ludocracy Now.  We are Ludocrats, We are Legion.

Saturday marked the 35th Minneapolis Board Game Mania and my first play of Ora et Labora.  This has got to be one of the greatest games of 2012—so much fun.  I tied for last with 166 but the winner only had 175.  We all developed different strategies, the winner built the only Wonder and I tried to pop Settlement after Settlement (and thankfully I did or I would have had last by a very wide margin had I not).

The game did take 3 hours I think… but with four people who were new to the game.  I’d love love love to play this again soon.

Later that night, our friends Steph, Danny, Jess and Marcus came over for some Carcassonne.  Jeff played under duress (I think the waiting to see The Iron Lady was wearing down his nerves).  I think I may have won the second game through my brilliant play of claiming Puss with one of my meeples.